The present disclosure relates to a method and system for a closed loop calling process in a system for facilitating call connections between a user and a target. For the sake of clarity and ease of understanding, references will be made to examples of applications for making sales calls. However, one of ordinary skill in the art will understand that the concepts described herein are applicable to any number of different fields, including, but not limited to, any contact relationship management system, telephone surveys, telephone number verification, census information gathering activities, fund raising campaigns, political campaigns, or any combination thereof.
An automated system for telephonically conducting simultaneous calling sessions on behalf of many users will involve calling attempts on separate successive sessions, which may be separated by a number of days, weeks, or in some cases, even months. An example of an automated system for facilitating telephone call connections between a user and a prospect is described in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2007/0121902 A1, published May 31, 2007, entitled TRANSFER OF LIVE CALLS, based upon application Ser. No. 11/556,301, filed Nov. 3, 2006, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
Users such as sales people who make calls to prospects need to modify subsequent calling sessions based on the call dispositions reached in an earlier calling session, and on events that may happen outside of calling sessions. Sales people and others who make outbound calls can benefit from coordinating their calling attempts from session to session in order to make sure they follow up on previous calls at an appropriate time, have the right information at their fingertips to begin each conversation, and switch effectively between automated calling sessions and manual dialing.
Accordingly, what is needed is an improved automated calling system having a closed loop calling process that creates and manages metadata about prospects to allow easy creation of desired calling lists by applying query filters to a master contact list. This metadata includes whether the prospect has ever been spoken to before, a follow up date after which the prospect will be automatically included in calling lists, and notes that describe the anticipated next steps in the ongoing interaction with the prospect. The metadata also can include a flag indicating whether the next attempt to contact the prospect will be in an automated calling session or will be established in some other way, including a scheduled call or meeting; whether the next unscheduled conversation is urgent, meaning the contact should be made as soon as possible; and whether the next unscheduled conversation is a priority, meaning that it should be preferentially attempted ahead of non-priority contact attempts in future calling sessions.
Customer relationship management (“CRM”) systems are typically used as master repositories for customer and prospect information. When using an automated calling process, the user has conversations with prospects that need to be correctly recorded in a CRM system, such as logging the call, setting a status field on the lead or contact record to indicate that at least one conversation has taken place, and creating a task record for follow up action. These updates need to be performed in a way that allows the user to mix automated calling sessions with unscheduled manual dialing and scheduled meetings in a coordinated way that avoids conflicts, such as calling a prospect back too early, or before an agreed-upon next step has been taken. While these updates can be performed manually by the user within the CRM system, it is more efficient and accurate to have them performed automatically by the automated calling system.